


Reel Around the Fountain

by tyroneslothrop



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Alcoholism, Angst, Death, Existentialism, M/M, Religion, Suicide mentions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-08
Updated: 2015-10-08
Packaged: 2018-04-25 12:20:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4960408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tyroneslothrop/pseuds/tyroneslothrop
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dan and Phil are dead. They're in heaven. They're playing chess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reel Around the Fountain

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first semi-plot driven fic with heavy use of dialogue, so I hope it's up to standards. Also, note, I don't expect you to keep up with the game that's illustrated here.

Dan is lost in a cerulean haze. He could barely see the chessboard in front of him, too amused by the passing cotton-candy wisps of cloud. They danced above and around him, much to his pleasure, and filled his nose with the soft waft of cotton. When he reached out to grab them, they floated away from his fingers, ending up tangled in the aura of the person in front of him. He giggled, and then felt his smile fall.

His opponent opposed him in more ways than one. Phil remained the antithesis of 'joie de vivre', sullen and sulky in the yawning sky. The clouds were passive in his presence. He considered them his backdrop, his stage, he did not care for their performance. He observed the yet-untouched chessboard with fleeting interest, the carved marble of the black pieces almost appeasing his insatiable, unwarranted desires.

With an almost palpable reluctance, his eyes flick to the grinning idiot seated in front of him. Probably doesn't even know how to play chess. But he's the only option he has, so with a solemn air, he splits the silence open.

“You move first.”

“Really?”

“Well yeah,” Phil says, exasperated already, “white always goes first.”

“That... might have racist connotations...” Daniel mumbles, completely sincere. Phil somehow refrains from aiming one of his pawns at his forehead. He decides to go for another angle instead, breathing deeply.

“Well let's think about it this way. White represents lightness, purity, innocence. Black symbolizes gloom, sadness, fear. Consider the chessboard the brain, and the game itself is a persons mental conflict. Deep down, the person wants to win against this fight, so they always let the light enter first. Regardless of what the aftermath might be.”

He's said nothing of worth, but Dan is grinning like he just waxed the greatest philosophical soliloquy known to man. This is going to be a long match, Phil is sure.

“I like you,” he says, just short of being sly.

“Just fucking move.”

Dan contemplates his pieces for a beat, and then raises his head again.

“The ones at the front can move twice, right?”

“Yeah, but only for the first move. Maybe you're not such a dunce after all.”

He just continues to grin at him, and places the pawn in front of his queen 2 places, landing with a thunk on the glass. What a fucking idiot, Phil thinks. If Dan is able to read his thoughts, he doesn't show it, an impish smile still plastered on his face. Phil pushes the pawn parallel to his opponents one space. It looks powerful in the little E6 space, he's almost proud of the little piece.

“So... what brings you here?” Dan says. Without a single trace of irony.

Phil's eyebrows quirk up. “That line usually work?”

“It's not a line, I just like talking to people,” and here comes the mumbling. It's kind of cute though, the way he chews around his words. He takes a second to admire his opponent's demure appearance.

“Well that makes one of us.”

He laughs, actually laughs, a laugh that could wake Jesus from the confines of sleep, and Phil would quit the match right there if he wasn't already in so deep. Dan slides another pawn to F3, looking strangely proud of himself.

If the person he's playing with isn't taking the match seriously, why should he? He throws the pawn in front of his king two places with a strange hostility that Dan doesn't pick up on. He instead attacks his pawn from the side. Phil is almost surprised.

“So you do know how to play?”  
  
“Kinda, I've only done this twice though.”

“I bet you say that to all the pervs.”

Before Dan can flood his ears with that shrill laugh of his, he attacks his pawn in rebuttal. The board's current state is rather unimpressive, Phil thinks. There's a wave of air that crashes around their feet, sweet and mellow in it's arrival. He wants to float away with it, sink down from the clouds back into civilization. At least some of them might know how to actually play.

“You still haven't answered my question,” Dan utters meekly, gazing up at him from his eyelashes and Phil has to rack his brains for a moment, trying to recall whatever he said.

“Oh? I'm afraid my story isn't all that interesting. Maybe you should speak about yourself instead? Rather surreal, seeing someone gifted with such beauty up here. Something fascinating must've happened.”

He's lying through his teeth, but Dan is smiling and blushing at his feet regardless, the chess game forgotten for a moment.

“Uh, okay,” and he can hear the shy smile in his voice, “but it's all very silly.”

“I'm sure it's not.”

Dan ignores the comment, placing his right bishop in front of his queen. Phil does the same with the left one, making them both smile almost fondly. Phil coughs, and his opponent startles.

"Uh. Well, I was eighteen and I'd left high school, and I had no idea what I was doing. I wanted to go to Uni, study law. I also wanted to run off into the horizon. I remember standing in the garden around this time, breathing in the reek of pollen. The sky was a majestic childish cyan, and the honey glow of..."

“Don't talk about colour!" Phil snaps, "Colour is just the light struggling against its confines. It adds nothing to a story.”

Dan considers this for a few moments, his eyes blazing. "Fine," he huffs, a new shade of bitterness taking over his voice, "I was born. I did some shit. I died. The end. Let's finish the game now."

Dan expects Phil to get aroused by this outburst, but instead he just sends him a bemused smirk, the lopsidedness of it stealing any intimidating value it might have had.

"Okay, point taken. Carry on, young Rimbaud."

"Ugh, you're awful."

Phil tries his hand at a comforting smile, which probably looks mean-spirited instead. Dan accepts it though, moving one of his pawns 2 steps, C4. It's easy and almost seems like a trap, but he takes it with his own pawn anyway. A genuine smile dances over his face and quickly disappears, the curtains closing over his visage. Dan caught it anyway, storing it in his heart. For the future. For next time.

"Well, as I was saying. The honey glow of the sun bleeding over the clouds mocked my morose pulse. I had been drinking till the AM, and I wished in that moment for the wine to sink me and pull me under, so I could toast one with Satan. God had other plans though. Despite it all I was alive, one with the bees buzzing through the air and one with the birds berating me in the trees. I felt the air seep into me, raise me up. In that moment, I was in euphoric bliss, and I wanted nothing more than to die. That was before, though. Before the most important day of my life."

Both of their lips quirk up at the same time.

"Relatable anecdote. Great job," half sincere, half mocking. He tries a friendly grin again.

"Yeah?"

"Yep," Phil says, popping the P. "Your move."

Dan gives a sigh and moves his knight to the furthermost right part of the board. Ho hum, Phil thinks. He decides to copy him, moving his black knight to the left.

"When did you realize you wanted to die?" he says as if he's asking about something as simple as the weather. Phil is almost stunned, but Dan's come to present himself as pretty eccentric character. He'll cope.

"I dunno. It was some sultry summer evening... something about the sky, the sun, existentialism, yada yada," he says with a haughty air that Dan actually picks up on. Acute young thing, Phil thinks.

"Hmmph."

"Hmm?"

Dan pouts. "I can tell by the way you carry yourself, you're a deep thinker. C'mon, get creative! Try and do some prose poetry. For me?" he says, ringing out the last syllable. Phil sighs. Considers it for a bit.

“I was driving one day...” he hesitates, and there's a hopeful twinkle in Dan's eye that he hasn't the heart to smite, “...and I felt the crashing rolls of air tumble and frolic around my car, and with the sun like a roaring lion through a spit of river in the Amazon, I wanted to throw my foot down and commit defenestration. Feel the leakage of brain through the smattering of glass. Rise above myself and see ruby fall into gravel. Paint over that depressing slate."

Dan looks impressed, in the way a child looks impressed when you buy them a balloon. He decides to appease the poor boy for a bit longer.

“...the next day I went to the shops in order to situate myself, reevaluate the world. Walking there, I felt my body float down the street like a corpse on a riverbed. Every ebbing piece of flesh in that area seemed to melt into each other, a slow cascading drip of morality into a molten sea. The smooth sinusoidal pulse of humanity rang through that insignificant town and I felt all the bodies become indistinguishable from one another. The longer we stood in that rumbling sun, the longer I couldn't tell the difference between my sweat and my neighbours sweat. I no longer seen the point, dear Daniel. I could not fathom the reason for living.”

Phil says all of this straight-faced, but with an absurd dramatic flair to it. His partner, regardless, is sat in an unresponsive stupor, his eyes glossed and wanton. Phil swallows, and counteracts this repulsive display of innocence with the grand clunk of a chess piece. Dan tears his eyes away, and Phil can't take this vile use of language anymore.

“You mentioned the most important day of your life." Phil murmurs, analyzing the board.

“Oh yes! I remember it,” he starts, dampness still lingering in his eyes, “I was eighteen, had just came back from a night of drinking in smoky bars. The alcohol was taking a lazy stroll through my veins, completely at peace. Unlike me, Phillip. I was a stelliferous monument of being that night, a twinkling phosphorescence in that blazing sky. The night was delicious, almost palatable. The crimsons and marmalade's bleeding and falling into one another like timid travelers on a train, like exuberant drunks stumbling from one pub to another. The clouds tore through those colours like wounds to the flesh, and in that moment I must have been the one wielding the knife. The Earth was so beautiful that night, so perennial and self assured, that I felt I was not much more than a mere guest, a worthless fleeting visitor. The sinking sun seemed to abscond me, so that is what I did. I was so happy though, believe me. I had never been so happy in my life.”

“You... left?”

“Yes, I went home and found the closest thing to a rope I had, and I swung from the ceiling like rotten fruit on a branch.”

They sit in silence for a few contemplative moments. The chess pieces, rigid on the frail glass, seem to fill to the brim with judgement. But Phil gives him such a tender, knowing look that it all leaks out from the figures, tumbles from the board and falls onto the heads of the people below.

Dan begins to choke around his own tongue, looking down again. "You don't..."

"I do, Daniel. I know."

Dan raises his head, trembling.

"Did you..."

"Yep," straight to the point, "can't be poetic about it. Doesn't deserve the lyrical treatment. It was night time. Basement. Gun. Head."

Dan's head turns away and down to his restless thighs. Phil nudges him with his foot, smiling. He smiles back, even though he's not looking.

"So that's why we were both put together."

"I suppose so."

Phil contemplates a bishop, twirling it around his nimble fingers. He gazes at the blanket of sky above them, and if he strains he can see those burning embers that have the nerve to call themselves 'stars'. He feels in the air, that what has transpired here can never be taken back. Things they'd never uttered before now trawling through the breeze. Their stories are the other seraphs gossip now, and whilst they natter away Dan and Phil will drift endlessly into the void of Heaven, no longer separate entities, slowly becoming something more pristine, more polished. More alive. Something wonderful.

Fuck it, he decides. With a grand swing of his arm, the chess pieces tumble from the glass and capsize over the edge, falling down into the sunken, long forgotten Earth below them. And with the last drop of courage he has, he stands, grabs Dan by the back of his head and pushes his lips to his own.

He feels Dan's awkward grin press back into himself, and thinks for the first time, that maybe eternity won't be that bad.


End file.
